“We are not animals!” Humanitarian border security and zoopolitical spaces in EUrope 1

•The paper offers a critique of the EU's humanitarian discourse of migrant-centredness.•It explores the animalisation of ‘irregular’ migrants as a particular spatial technology of power.•It argues that there is more at stake than a mismatch between neoliberal ‘rhetoric’ and ‘reality’ on the ground.•Jacques Derrida's zoopolitical approach offers an alternative diagnosis and critique beyond the ‘rhetoric/reality’ bind.•A new perspective is offered on the significance of the production of zoopolitical spaces.

This article juxtaposes two prominent discourses accompanying the neoliberalisation of EUrope's borders. The first is the emerging notion of humanitarian ‘migrant-centredness’ found in the policies of elites and security professionals in the field of EUropean border security and migration management. The second is the use of animalised metaphors and imagery that pervade narratives of ‘irregular’ migrants' embodied experiences of detention across and beyond EUrope. It argues that what is at stake in this juxtaposition is more than simply a discrepancy between the ‘rhetoric’ of neoliberal bordering and the ‘reality’ of ‘irregular’ migrants' experiences. Such a view, which is commonly held among diverse critics of border violence, ultimately makes a problematic appeal back to the very humanitarian frame that has already been coopted by authorities associated with or even complicit in that violence. Seeking an alternative diagnosis and ground for critique beyond the ‘rhetoric/reality’ bind, the analysis draws on conceptual resources found in (post)biopolitical theory – particularly Jacques Derrida's concept of ‘zoopolitics’ – in order to identify and explore animalisation as a specific spatial technology of power. Understanding the work that the zoopolitical threshold does in shaping contemporary spaces of incarceration and producing animalised subjects offers new insights into both governmental logics of border security and the limits of humanitarian-based critiques.